A BLU-RAY SALE, at Amazon.

A SITE DEDICATED TO THE ACORN/CARNAHAN CONNECTION. (Via Dana Loesch).

TENNESSEE DEMOCRAT OPPOSES GAY ADOPTION.

LIST: 100 Best Professors Who Blog.

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S FAVORITE WORDS: “Let me be clear.”

(Via Blithe Spirit).

UPDATE: Reader Peggy Heath writes:

I’m in my mid-fifties, and when I hear Obama say either, “Make no mistake” or “Let me be clear”, my memory inserts the word “perfectly” and I’m listening to Tricky Dick again. I haven’t heard anyone else remark upon it, though.

Indeed.

NICK GILLESPIE: Cheerios’ Reign of Terror Must Be Stopped! Or, Thank God For Cass Sunstein. Really.

ASPIRIN AND THE 1918 FLU: A deadly combination? Well, sometimes, maybe.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

SEARCH ENGINE BING.COM IS DOING WELL. I’ve started using it regularly, and I’m quite happy with the results.

WHY PEOPLE ARE BAILING OUT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN INCREASING NUMBERS. “Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.”

The excuses offered for this piece of idiocy are even more damning than the idiocy itself.

CATO INSTITUTE: What Does the State Department Not Want Us to Know about Honduras?

THE COLLIDER, A PARTICLE, and a theory about fate:

A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather. . . . This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”

This theory does lend a certain majesty to what has otherwise been a fairly embarrassing chain of events . . .

HMM: Surging traffic at most law-professor blogs.

MATT WELCH: The defeat of communism 20 years ago was the most liberating moment in history. So why don’t we talk about it more?

IN THE MAIL: The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11.

BILL WHITTLE: THROW THE BUMS OUT. “We already pay farmers not to farm. Why can’t we pay legislators not to legislate?”

THIS IS ENCOURAGING: Two European Nuclear Scientists Arrested as Al-Qaeda Suspects.

And note this:

“Why do you think that story wasn’t more widely reported?” I asked.

He said something to the effect of: there are some things the public finds easier to ignore.

That seems to be the current political mood.

“THOSE SAME PUBLIC SERVANTS WOULD THROW THE TAXPAYERS IN JAIL.”

THE WRONG WAY TO pass a class. Maybe this worked in 1978.

TAXING THE MIDDLE CLASS: “There is a jumbo fight brewing among Democrats over just how much they’re going to tax the middle class in the name of health-care reform. Senate Democrats want to tax so-called Cadillac health-care plans to pay for the gargantuan health-care bill, while House Democrats don’t think it’s a good idea to whack middle-class voters, and especially union members.” I don’t know why there’s even an argument over this. President Obama has promised no tax increases on people making less than $250K a year.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BAUCUS BILL: Part Two.

INSTANT POPULARITY BOOST! Schwarzenegger Vetoes Limits on Administrators’ Pay. “California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday vetoed a bill that would have barred most salary increases and bonuses for executives at the University of California and California State University systems in bad budget years, such as this one.”

Some related thoughts at The Economist:

Many working-class men have lost their jobs. Those who are still employed have seen their wages stagnate and their pensions shrivel in the stockmarket crash. Their health insurance is insecure, but they don’t trust Congress not to make it worse.

Meanwhile, they can see that one group of Americans has been practically unaffected by the recession: government employees. Their hours have not been cut, their benefits are gold-plated and they are almost impossible to sack. In good times, few Americans notice these things, but in bad times, the disparity grates. Cops and firefighters can retire in their 40s and draw defined-benefit pensions for life. With overtime, one tenth of the police in Massachusetts made more than the governor’s annual salary in 2006, according to the Boston Globe. Including benefits, the average employee of New York City makes more than $100,000, according to Forbes, while some Californian prison guards “sock away $300,000 a year”.

And what do taxpayers get for their generosity? The bad bargains get all the publicity. Union contracts force the postal service to pay thousands of unneeded workers to do nothing. In New York, public-school teachers who can’t be trusted to teach but can’t be sacked either are paid to sit and do crosswords.

This is the sleeper issue of 2010 at the state level.

BRUCE JENNER: “He’s done nothing. He’s done absolutely nothing.”

BOMBING THE MOON: In Forbes, Kenneth Anderson and I write about law and war in outer space. And support an Obama Administration arms control initiative.

ROGER KIMBALL: Crunch Time For Health Care: Now It’s Up To Us.

BRITISH GAG ORDER FAILS. And note all the Twitter traffic. Jim Meigs emails: “The lesson: If you want the whole world to see your dirty laundry, hire lawyers to help you hide it.” Heh. Indeed.

WHY STOP WITH BUNNIES? Throw another dog on the fire. . .

GOLD HITS another record high.

Related: Oil up above $74 in Europe as dollar weakens.

UPDATE: Still more: Obama Dollar Retreats Most Against Commodities in Wealth Shift. “President Barack Obama’s effort to lead the world economic recovery by spending the U.S. out of its recession is undermining the dollar, triggering record commodities rallies as investors scour the globe for hard assets.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Indeed:

Honeywell Chief Executive David Cote, a Republican who supported Mr. Obama in the election, says he was taken aback by the president’s rhetoric on the tax issue. “You can’t love jobs and hate those who create them,” he says.

Another rube catches on . . . .

IF YOU STRIKE ME DOWN, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

Well, when Fox News’s audience is skyrocketing, and The Nation (!) is calling you “Whiner in Chief,” maybe it’s time to recalibrate the media strategy. . . .

UPDATE: More here.

THE FREEWHEELIN’ ALAN GRAYSON: “What I did is like a Bob Dylan protest song; what Joe Wilson did is like a belch.”

TIM PAWLENTY: The Baucus Prescription: Higher Taxes and Higher Premiums.

JOEL KOTKIN: Our Euro President. “Barack Obama’s seemingly inexplicable winning of the Nobel Peace Prize says less about him than about the current mentality of Europe’s leadership class. Lacking any strong, compelling voices of their own, the Europeans are now trying to hijack our president as their spokesman.”

WINDOWS 7, as viewed by the Mac faithful.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: The Next Big Political Issue? The U.S. Dollar. “The greenback’s continuing slide makes it a handy metric that neatly encapsulates America’s current economic troubles and possible long-term decline. . . . And that’s the political problem for the Obama administration. Its benign neglect of the dollar is another example of an economic policy — along with TARP and the $787 billion stimulus — that the White House thinks is helping the economy, but many Americans find wrongheaded.”

HMM: Protesters Rally Against Obama Song at New Jersey School.

About 70 protesters stood on a sidewalk across the street from the B. Bernice Young School waving flags and homemade placards, singing “God Bless America” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and chanting slogans such as “No indoctrination” and “Free children, free minds.”

One of the great accomplishments of the Obama Presidency is the newfound ability of people on the right to put together a successful protest on short notice.

ROBERT REICH TO THE ELDERLY: “We’re Going To Let You Die.” Well, these are his views of what an honest President would say from 2007. Are they in context? Seem to be.

MICHAEL YON: Market Garden: A Remembrance During Time Of War. Plus, a conversation with General Petraeus. (Bumped).

HEH: “He gets the Nobel Peace Prize one week, the next week he’s declaring war on Fox News and gay bloggers.”

UH OH: Dollar Reaches Breaking Point as Banks Shift Reserves. “Central banks flush with record reserves are increasingly snubbing dollars in favor of euros and yen, further pressuring the greenback after its biggest two- quarter rout in almost two decades.”

Meanwhile, Charles Austin writes, “Just asking. But has anybody checked George Soros’ trading activity recently as the dollar started its sharp decline? He does have more practical experience in bringing down a country’s currency than anyone else I can name.”

VIDEO: Steve Wynn vs. Jennifer Granholm.

THIS POST SAYS YOU CAN fax your Senators on healthcare via a website for that.

E.J. DIONNE: Angry White Men Have Real Grievances. I didn’t realize that was even possible.

ROGER SIMON: “For a guy who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama is sure suddenly playing rough with his enemies.”

DUTCH BANK RUN LEADS TO SEIZURE: “The Netherlands’ central bank said Monday it has taken control of DSB Bank NV after clients began a run amid fears the regional lender might collapse. Doubts about the health of DSB, a small but well-known bank based in the north of the country, grew since the start of October as media reports questioned its solvency and clients began having problems withdrawing money from their Internet accounts.”

JOHN HINDERAKER: This isn’t reform, it is stupidity.

FIGHTING the hate.

UPDATE: “Hey, that water won’t carry itself.”

PHOTO MIS-TIMING: The lame hairstyles should have been a tipoff.

A.P.: Dems Scramble After Warning From Health Insurers.

MORE ON COLUMBUS: Rand Simberg on Columbus and space.

Plus, Columbus and the Jews. And, although I linked it below, Celebrating The Wrong Italian.

JOE LIEBERMAN MAY SPONSOR DON’T-ASK-DON’T-TELL REPEAL IN THE SENATE. I’m fine with that, but find it kind of amusing. . .

But isn’t it the case that Obama could suspend DADT tomorrow under his stop-loss authority? Or am I wrong about that?

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “I think you’re right. I think Lieberman, who has been the target of much Obama abuse, is calling a bluff.” We’ll see.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Cameron Jackson writes:

Stop loss applies to deployment and is overcome by a chapter, which, under 600-20, a DADT violation is. Generally, you’re not going to deploy someone under a chapter. When I took my company to Iraq, I left behind (and chaptered) two good officers for failure to establish a family care plan (another 600-20 violation). In Iraq, I initiated two chapters; one for pregnancy (obvious) and one for mental health.

Unfortunate, but there it is.

You can probably answer the legal aspects better than I can, but how we apply DADT has less to do with stop loss and more to do with a policy making decision among our civilian leadership. You just need to rewrite AR 600-20, on the Army side.

I’ve got two friends that are probably DADT violators; one used to be under my command. Both are good Officers.

Since I never had specific knowledge, the issue never came up, and I am white as snow, as far as my oath and ethics.

Still, we need to reach a point where everyone can take a bullet for their country.

Sorry, if I bother you with this long missive.

No bother. Thanks.

ONCE AGAIN, I’M CHARGED WITH BEING too charitable to President Obama. Well, that’s just me, I guess.

SURPRISING PRAISE for the Chevy Sprint Turbo.

CHANGE: “A simple question: what was all the fuss about last week with a new reserve currency anyway? Here is an answer. If OPEC demands payment for oil in something other than U.S. dollars, then people who buy oil (and who doesn’t?) have to stockpile the other currencies in which oil is priced and traded. That would be pretty tough on America.”

RANGEL UPDATE: Rangel gets primary challenge from former campaign director. So is it for real? Or a distraction to forestall more serious challengers?

PAJAMA-BAITING IN THE WHITE HOUSE: Mickey Kaus thinks it’s Axelrod, and that it’s deliberate.

Meanwhile, Jake Tapper on Facebook: “Who cares what some anonymous coward at the WH thinks about bloggers?” Bloggers, of course!

UPDATE: Reader Paul Harper writes on Rangel and Pajama-baiting:

Interesting timing re: take off the pajamas. Kaus is often right on this stuff and Obama badly needs an excuse to stand still a while longer in Afghanistan. But the real function is to erect another kind of Dem to distract the media from the scandal that could really cost the WH and the Dems in 2010 and 2012: a close connection to Charles Rangel.

Unfortunately, the optics of race are part of this undercurrent; but the reality is that Rangel is simply practicing the kind of pocket-lining that Dems and Republicans of all political stripes have been practicing for ages. Rangel, however, is about (maybe) to be caught.

Obama looks good, saintly, when preaching for everyone to be just like him calm and composed as he stands transfixed in the headlights of history. Me? I’m all for jumping out of the way or for figuring out someway to knock out the driver quick.

Obama needs real opposition in Congress in 2010 and Axelrod understands how vulnerable Dems are on the Chicago politics of cash issue.

Are they that smart? Anyway, InstaPundit, at least, remains undistracted — see the next post.

LIVER CELLS MADE FROM SKIN CELLS: “Researchers converted human skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells and then converted the stem cells into liver cells that were able to function in the livers of mice.” Faster, please.

LEARNING TO DEAL WITH an Everest of digital data.

THE BATTLE FOR oatmeal honors.

HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY: Many in the West will demonstrate their fierce originality and intellectual independence today by condemning Christopher Columbus using the same shopworn cliches they used last year. For those of a different bent, I recommend Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea : A Life of Christopher Columbus, which takes a somewhat different position. Here’s an excerpt:

At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .

Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: “A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”

Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.

Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today — which, as Jim Bennett has noted, has roots that might surprise its proponents:

This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a minuscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect.

Indeed. Nonetheless, Bennett thinks that a different Italian deserves the real credit. (Reposted from 2005, but it still fits.) [Doesn't this leave you vulnerable to charges of recycling too? --ed. I prefer to think of it as "They came at us in the same old way, and, you know, we beat them in the same old way."]

UPDATE: The original link to Bennett’s column seems to have succumbed to link-rot, but I believe this is it.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: In the Crosshairs of the Syrian-Iranian Axis.

BIODIESEL myths and facts.

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: He Won’t Be Back.

GAY PATRIOT: The (Unexpected) Integrity of Many Gay Left Bloggers. My advice to the Gay Left is the same as my advice to the Tea Party Right — if you don’t like what “your” politicians are doing, quit donating to ‘em and run somebody against them in the primary. They’ll notice. And the Gay Left and Tea Party Right might even want to talk to each other; they may find they’ve got more in common than they realize. . . .

WHEN A SCALPEL ISN’T JUST A KNIFE: Surgical Scalpel Sniffs Out Tumors While It Cuts. “A chemical sniffer combined with a scalpel is slated to begin human clinical trials next month.”

MARK LEVIN AGAINST the AAUP.

120 MPG IN BMW’s hybrid trike. Which looks “like a Stealth Bomber with training wheels.”

NAMING OPPORTUNITIES at Harvard Law School.

SOME Survival Lessons From Hollywood.

IN THE MAIL: From Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, Thrift: Rebirth Of A Forgotten Virtue.

RALLYING FOR SCHOOL CHOICE in Washington, DC.

BYRON YORK: Obama Stands By Kevin Jennings — Or Does He?

MICHAEL BARONE: “Conceptual Language” hides health care bill’s cost.

BUT THERE WILL BE NO “DEATH PANELS:” State plan may place limits on patients’ hospital options. “The state’s ambitious plan to shake up how providers are paid could have a hidden price for patients: Controlling Massachusetts’ soaring medical costs, many health care leaders believe, may require residents to give up their nearly unlimited freedom to go to any hospital and specialist they want. . . . This new system of ‘global payments’ would discourage overuse of expensive medical services, force providers to live within a budget, and improve coordination of care for patients, supporters argue.”

Think of them as “life” panels, because they’ll decide if you get to live!

WHEN BEAUTY isn’t true.

THE PRICE OF DISRUPTIVE TACTICS. A pretty sympathetic treatment. I wonder how the New York Times will treat it if people on the right start doing this sort of thing? Ultimately, who has more incentive to disrupt the smooth functioning of government — lefty environmentalists, or conservatives and libertarians?

HEH: Now, Obama wins Motor Trend Car of Year Award.

WHERE WILL WE BE in a year?

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Does SNL really deserve attention for poking fun at Barack Obama? Is it that they’re doing it at all? Because they are not doing it well!” It’s that they’re doing it at all.

MICKEY KAUS: “Where’s Crossfire When You Need It? Jon Klein’s Triumph! CNN now in 4th place, losing to FOX, MSNBC, and itself (HLN)! Somewhere Tucker Carlson is smiling.”

ROSS DOUTHAT: Heckuva Job, Barack. “Obama gains nothing from the prize. No domestic constituency will become more favorably disposed to him because five Norwegians think he’s already changed the world — and the Republicans were just handed the punch line for an easy recession-era attack ad. (To quote the Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, anticipating the 30-second spots to come: ‘He got a Nobel Prize. What did you get? A pink slip.’) . . . At the same time, the prize leaves Obama more open to ridicule. It confirms, as a defining narrative of his presidency, the gap between his supporters’ cloud-cuckoo-land expectations and the inevitable disappointments of reality.”

NEW SPIN: It’ll be good if Iran gets nukes.

MARK TAPSCOTT: Society of Environmental Homers protect Gore. “It’s been years since former Vice President Al Gore took questions from journalsts willing to ask challenging and probing questions about either alleged flaws in the evidence for his global warming views or details of his financial interests in the adoption of government policies based on those views. But for at least one question at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), Gore was presented with an opportunity to address his critics and defend his views. Unfortunately, as this video of the encounter shows, not only did Gore do what politicians usually do – evade the question – but his SEJ buddies made sure there would be no followup questions by turning off the microphone and forcing the questioner to leave.”

Like questioning communism at a Pravda editorial board . . . .

UH OH (CONT’D): Fed’s Bullard warns on inflation, unemployment. “Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said Sunday that unemployment is headed into double digits, while the medium-term inflation outlook poses more risk than generally believed, according to reported comments.”

TEA PARTIERS turn on GOP leadership. Given the state of GOP leadership, I’m not surprised.

PENSION NEWS STAYS BAD: Steep Losses Pose Crisis for Pensions: Two Bad Choices for Funds: Cut Benefits Or Take Greater Risks to Rebuild Assets. “The financial crisis has blown a hole in the rosy forecasts of pension funds that cover teachers, police officers and other government employees, casting into doubt as never before whether these public systems will be able to keep their promises to future generations of retirees.” The important thing to remember is that these promises were always untenable — the financial meltdown just made this apparent sooner, rather than (as the politicians had hoped) later.

UH OH: “The dollar’s position as the world’s leading reserve currency faces increased pressure as the financial crisis allows emerging economies greater influence on the world stage, analysts said.”

TRYING TO pack the courts?

VIDEO: Al Gore and the death of journalism. “Mr Gore declined to address the issue and when asked for a straight answer from McAleer – the response of the Society of Environmental Journalists was not to applaud one of their own for bringing truth to power but instead they cut the mic of a journalist. It seems it is more important to protect a wealthy politician/businessman than to allow a journalist to ask inconvenient questions.”

Kind of puts this crap into perspective, doesn’t it?

MARK STEYN ON THE WITHERING OF FREE SPEECH:

As Canadians have discovered, liberty is lost very quietly and quickly. And trying to get it back is slow and painful – particularly at a time when artists, universities, publishers and others who congratulate themselves incessantly on their truth-telling courage find increasingly pre-emptive self-censorship the better part of valor.

The Europe of 2020 will have considerably less freedom of expression than today. American exceptionalism is going to have to be exceptionally exceptional to hold out against that trend.

My advice? In the words of a famed community organizer, get in their face, and punch back twice as hard.

WHITE HOUSE: Gay rights marchers? Where? “He knows this march is happening, and he can’t even acknowledge it?” Hey, that’s the same way he treated the 9/12 Tea Party protesters . . . .

UPDATE: White House official calls gays part of “Internet left fringe.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Orin Kerr seems to think my linking of John Aravosis’ headline above is misleading. Well, follow the link and watch the video and make up your own mind. I think the White House is clearly trying to marginalize the gay-rights protesters which — as noted above — is their standard response to protest.

And hey, I was the one who was too quick to praise Obama for his gay-rights speech. So I could be wrong . . .

MORE: White House Retreats. Greenwald, Aravosis, not impressed.

MOE LANE TO JOHN ARAVOSIS AND OTHER UNHAPPY GAY RIGHTS ADVOCATES: “I mean, really: what are you going to do about it? Vote Republican?“

STEPHEN GREEN: “Did we just retreat in Afghanistan — after a couple extra combat brigade teams have arrived?”

ADVICE FOR OBAMA’S NOBEL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH — but with a problem: “I don’t think Obama thinks that way.”

COULD MONTY PYTHON BE MADE in today’s Britain?

IN FRANCE, illegal immigrants take an in-your-face approach.

FORGOTTEN SOLDIERS OF THE INTEGRATION FIGHT:

The first troops to reach Oxford found over 100 wounded federal marshals at the center of campus, 27 of them hit by civilian gunfire. Packs of hundreds of rioters swarmed the city, some holding war dances around burning vehicles. . . . Snipers opened fire on the Army convoys and bricks struck the heads of American soldiers. Black G.I.’s in one convoy were ambushed by white civilians who tried to decapitate them in their open Jeeps with metal pipes.

Maj. William Callicott of the Mississippi National Guard had served in World War II; he said he “never was as terrified as I was going onto the campus that night.”

“It was the fact that I knew there had to be some local people from my hometown probably over there in that mob,” Major Callicott said. “That’s what really worried me. If we killed anybody it could be my next-door neighbor.”

The Army troops restored order to the school and the city, block by block. A girl watched a team of infantrymen under attack on the Oxford town square and, according to a reporter at the scene, wondered aloud, “When are they going to shoot back?” Except for a few warning shots, they never did.

Yet when the soldiers left the city a few weeks later, they marched into oblivion. Most were under orders not to talk to the press. The Cuban missile crisis unfolded just weeks later, wiping Oxford from the front pages.

I sent this out to my National Security Law seminar earlier, but thought it was worth blogging, too.

UPDATE: Reader Deborah Durkee writes:

Thanks for posting the excerpt of the NY Times article, Prof. Reynolds.

My (caucasian) daughter has been working on her Ph.D. at Ole Miss in Oxford (she’s now interning in CO). One of her best friends is a lovely young black woman from the Chicago area. Her folks want her to move back home, but she loves the South. Loves Mississippi and Memphis just an hour north.

Mississippi (I’m sure) still has remnants of the old Mississippi, but my daughter never saw it, and this generation of young adults believe in everyone is a person…period. It’s great to honor those who helped in that “integration fight” that I watched (all scary) on television as a child. It’s even a greater honor to those who fought that fight that the old South has changed so much that blacks from Chicago want to come home to live.

Yes, there’s been quite the reverse-diaspora going on over the past decade or so. Meanwhile, this story is news to a lot of people. There’s great footage in Eyes On The Prize, where it looks like something out of Apocalypse Now.

MARKDOWNS ON musical instruments and recording equipment.

“I’M NOT AN EXPERT ON ANY OF THESE THINGS:” Barbra Streisand is suddenly reticent about politics.

PRAISE FOR MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: “At a time when many celebrities risk alienating their fan base by voicing political views, McConaughey is opting to speak out on behalf of our men and women in uniform.”

J. STORRS HALL: “What we need (i.e. don’t have now) is competence.”